Page 27 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2016
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important to the community sector and to stakeholders in our city. The government has responded to that concern already. Perhaps Mr Hanson should have looked at the revised proposal that came out before this bill was introduced, which was in direct response to that earlier consultation that he cites as a reason to refer to committee.
Further, some of the other concerns are quite overstated. Let me turn particularly to the issue around the role of the Public Trustee as public trustee and guardian. First of all, I will not have any besmirching of the reputation, role or function of the Public Trustee in this place. Further, I will not accept assertions that in some respects the Public Trustee is some arm of executive government. The Public Trustee is an independent statutory office holder who exercises their functions at arm’s length from government and with a high level of diligence and probity.
It is the case that there has been a serious fraud committed inside the Public Trustee’s office. People have been charged with offences, and they are currently before the courts. This fraud was detected as a result of the Public Trustee’s own processes and procedures. It points to a Public Trustee that is continuously vigilant about the need to detect irregularities or fraud inside its office when it comes to the management of public funds. I trust the justice process will run its course in determining whether or not those charged with those fraud offences are the people responsible.
I note the conversation and debate publicly about the merging of public trustee and public guardian functions in the office of a new public trustee and guardian. But the merging of these two functions makes perfect sense. The Public Trustee currently manages the financial affairs of people who are vulnerable and unable to manage those affairs themselves. They are required to manage those affairs in the best interests of the person. Public guardians are required to manage the life affairs of the person other than financial matters because they are vulnerable and unable to do so themselves. Public guardians are also required to make decisions on behalf of that person in the best interests of that person. There is no proposal to require one individual to manage both the financial and the public guardian functions for a person. There is no proposal to do that. It is misplaced to suggest otherwise.
It is also worth mentioning that under this bill the Human Rights Commission will have an enhanced audit function of the Public Trustee when it comes to the administration of vulnerable people’s financial affairs. There will also be protections through the role of the Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which makes the orders for the Public Trustee and public guardian to perform their function. It is simply wrong to assert that there has been some watering down or compromising of independence or of the capacity of a public guardian or a public trustee to act in the best interests of a vulnerable person.
There will still be a public guardian; there will still be a public trustee. They will still perform the statutory powers they perform now to protect the interests of vulnerable people in our community who are unable to make those decisions for themselves. What will change is that we will not have this proliferation of small independent offices, all with significant management overheads that detract from spending taxpayers’ dollars on front-line rights protection. That is what this bill is fundamentally about. It is about saying, “As a small jurisdiction, why do we seek to
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